Revolutionary Rant: IGN Blows Up Alderaan

I hope everyone had a happy May 4th. Apparently it was Star Wars Day yesterday. What the fuck? Yeah. A day. For Star Wars. I like Star Wars as much as the next guy, but a whole day is a bit much, don't you think?

No, of course not. You're all a bunch of fucking nerds. I am too. When I realized it was Star Wars Day yesterday I instantly wanted to watch The Empire Strikes Back. How could I possibly rant against Star Wars? Star Wars is awesome. You know, games journalism took a turn for the worse this week though. You could even say the Empire joined forces with the Trade Federation....

Shit, I took it too far, didn't I? Look, on Monday the news surfaced thatIGN, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, one of the biggest media corporations in the world, was buying UGO and subsequently 1UP. Ouch, poor 1UP. Weren't they just bought by some other, extremely-large, shitty company? Yeah, that was UGO.

I want to make something clear here, before I get into the profanities (or am I too late for that already?). The people who work for IGN, for 1UP, UGO... they may be really cool people. I met Frank Cifaldi at GDC. That guy is video gaming through and through. Some of these people may be really on their game too. Who knows? Maybe buried underneath all the "SIGN UP FOR IGN PRIME RIGHT NOW" shit is some hard hitting journalism.

Still, I think I've got a good foundation when I make the claims I'm about to make. I've been reading more about video games than I've actually been playing games for years now. What I'm doing right now? Writing about games? Writing about people who write about games? Writing about the industry? This is my video game. This is my game like Halo: Reach or Call of Duty can be someone's game.

So when I say that IGN is a... pretty shitty site to visit for video games, I know what I'm talking about. I can say the same about UGO. I'm comfortable saying that if you cut UGO open with a surgical knife, you'd probably strike a major artery and nothing but "Top 10 Hottest Girls in Games" and "Top 10 First Person Shooters" would start spraying out until you were just covered in bad journalism. 1UP... I'm surprised by the wealth of quality still present at 1UP despite all of the unfortunate economics of gaming journalism.

This massive preamble all comes down to one very convenient post IGN wrote over the past week in regards to the PlayStation Network outage.

In fact, this article addressed the steps Sony has outlined in order to make good on their massive fuck-up. One IGN Editor by the name of Colin Moriarty asked the question "Do PSN freebies make up for the outage?" Before I continue, you should ask yourself the same question. Does a free month of PlayStation Plus make up for the couple of weeks of PSN down time?

Mr. Moriarty doesn't think so a free download sits fine with him, but Moriarty shows his true nature in the following selection:

The free month of PlayStation Plus actually rubs me the wrong way. It's not that PlayStation Plus isn't a great service -- it actually is. As a heavy PSN user, I was a day-one adopter of PlayStation Plus and have certainly been one of its staunchest defenders in the media. It's just that by giving PlayStation Plus to everyone, there's no differentiation between those of us who were into the PSN experience enough to pay for some added services as opposed to a vast majority of PSN users who opted not to. Gamers who paid for a service they were not able to access are getting the same treatment as those who never paid to begin with. That's an unsound way to deal with what, in essence, amounts to PS3's most loyal fanbase.

Colin, if the golden spoon you received at birth is still up your butt, you should probably remove it.

First, gaming is an expensive hobby, plain and simple. Second, only the most hardcore spend money on PlayStation Plus. Most gamers, especially those who don't dive deep enough to venture past IGN into the deep waters of games journalism, are happy just to play Call of Duty online. Those same people probably realized the PlayStation Network was down and simply got up from the couch and walked outside.

So when your readership is comprised mostly of those non-core-non-casual gamers and you compose such an elitist perspective and publish it for the internet to see, you leave me with no choice.

You are so fucking stupid. Your opinion is so wrong. You have this cushy job in an ivory tower where your job is to play games all day. You don't have to spend much money on games so the $50 for a year of PSN doesn't amount to much. You're already being given additional PS+ service for the number of days that it's been out. Still, you feel like you're in an appropriate position to say that people who couldn't afford PS+ don't deserve as much as you do.

It was wrong of you to open your mouth (or type or whatever) and ejaculate these thoughts. Next time you feel so moved to write an editorial, give us all a break and think about what other's might feel about your stupid fucking opinion.

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I'm inclined to end my article. What a strong finish! Instead, I want to explain something, possibly with less rant and more... I don't know, empathy. I've written stupid shit too (remember the whole Empire + Trade Federation thing?). I can have pretty disagreeable opinions. Colin, you're probably a really nice guy, but I take issue with what you have to say about PlayStation Plus. Gaming lends itself to very heated arguments, but it lends itself even more to new friends. If you're at E3 and want to meet, shoot me an e-mail at daniel@gamerevolution.com. The same goes for anyone heading to E3. If you want to chat about gaming and share some strong opinions, I'll be at E3.